The Endless Beginning
by Casteline
Summary: Sequel to Perfect. Eventual Sam/G.
1. Family Remains

Sequel to Perfect. I know, I know, you've all been waiting for soooo long.

The Endless Beginning is six chapters long. There will be a sequel, Truth and Consequences, which I have yet to actually start writing. It only took me about five hours to write all of The Endless Beginning though, so I'm hoping I can crank out Truth and Consequences in quick time.

For some reason, a lot of this is told from Nate's point of view. I mean, a good portion if from G's point of view, but Nate managed to work his way in there too. It's kinda strange.

I don't own. I know, shocking, right?

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**THE ENDLESS BEGINNING**

**CHAPTER ONE – FAMILY REMAINS**

It's been weeks. It's been weeks and G tries to pretend that everything is normal, that nothing has changed.

But things have changed. The whole dynamic in the office, in the field, has changed. Things are different and Callen kind of hates it.

He misses the way things were. Everything was good before. For the first time in his life, he felt like he had a real home, a real family.

There was Kensi, the pain in the ass little sister who got everything she wanted, mostly through destruction of other people's property.

There was Eric, the creepy cousin who hangs out in the dark basement playing video games.

There was Nate, the older brother who always acted like he knew everything about everyone, when really he didn't know jack half the time.

There was Hetty, the crazy old coot, the ever watchful grandmother who really did know every little thing, no matter how insignificant it might seem.

Then there was Sam, the brother, the best friend, the one he could joke with, the one he could tell anything.

Even Dom was working his way into the family. The naïve little brother you can't help but constantly worry about.

And now things were so different. Their little family, the only family he's ever really had, was falling apart.

Or maybe the family wasn't breaking apart. Maybe he was breaking away from them, and they were just like they'd always been.

Maybe he was the only one that saw what was happening to them.


	2. Prying Eyes Know No Lies

**THE ENDLESS BEGINNING**

**CHAPTER TWO – PRYING EYES KNOW NO LIES**

Nate liked to watch the others when they weren't looking. Not in a creepy stalker way (though trying to convince them of that would have been difficult), but in a friendly way. In the way that meant that he wanted to know what was going on with his family at all times.

And right now, he knew something was terribly wrong with his family.

It had started a few weeks ago, at least, that's when he first noticed it, and he'd really like to think that he noticed things when they happened, not weeks after, that was his job, after all.

He had first noticed on morning when they were getting briefed by Hetty on their new case. A drowned marine, if memory served.

He could be wrong though, about the marine, 'cause, to be honest, he was a little more focused on his teammates. Not that he would ever tell Hetty that.

Kensi and Dom were watching the screen, Eric was controlling the screen, Hetty was talking, and Sam and Callen were on opposite sides of the room, also watching the screen.

None of that screamed abnormal. And yet, something was very wrong, and Nate could feel it. He looked around at his teammates again, trying to discover exactly what it was that made the room so awkward all of a sudden.

And there it was.

Sam was staring intently at the screen absorbing every ounce of information expressed, but by the look in his eyes, there was a lot more than just a dead marine on his mine.

And the same look from Callen. Like he was listening to every word said, but not really hearing it.

Nate knew for a fact that if he were to ask Sam and Callen what had had been said in the brief, they would be able to tell him exactly what happened, even though he knew neither was paying full attention. Very little attention actually.

Nate looked over at Kensi, who seemed to feel his gaze and turned to face him. She gave him a worried look that no doubt matched his own, then looked at Sam, then Callen, then back at him, still worried.

Nate sent her a sorry attempt at a smile, conveying just how worried he really was, before both turned their attention back to Hetty.

So what was it that had Sam and Callen so distracted? What had happened to disrupt their focus so greatly?

And how was it going to affect the team?

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I swear this is the last of the inner monologuing.


	3. Mea Culpa

Sorry for the short chapter :(

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**THE ENDLESS BEGINNING**

**CHAPTER THREE – MEA CULPA**

"Hey, Callen!" Nate shouted as he ran down the stairs.

"What do you want Nate?"

It had been weeks since whatever had happened happened. Since Nate had first noticed. And things weren't getting better.

He hadn't told anyone about what he'd noticed, what he was seeing, though he knew that Kensi knew, and based on the looks she gave him when things seemed particularly awkward, she had expected whatever this was to have been worked out a while ago. They both had.

"Just wanted to talk," Nate said, catching up with him.

"Really?" Callen began and Nate knew this was likely going somewhere sarcastic if not a little mean. "'Cause I was just about to find some nice doctor to talk to. I don't really share enough and I really need someone to talk to and shrink my head. But now that you've come to talk…"

Nate rolled his eyes. There it was. "You know that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit?"

"And for some of us, it's the only for of wit we have," Callen said, walking ahead.

"Okay so… we'll talk later then," Nate called after him.

"Very successful, Nate," Kensi said from behind him.

"Yeah," he said with a sigh. "I know."

Kensi patted his back before heading down the stairs after Callen.


	4. Painful Echoes

I didn't really want to post two chapters, but I felt kinda bad cause I haven't given you guys anything in a while.

This chapter is kind of strange in my mind, but I really love it.

WARNING: It's not R, but it's probably the closest to smut I'll get for a while.

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**THE ENDLESS BEGINNING**

**CHAPTER FOUR – PAINFUL ECHOES**

Callen had been sitting on the bench for maybe twenty minutes, sipping slowly from a deep pink smoothie, when he felt someone watching him. He spent a few seconds pondering the number of way he could kill a man with the two dollar smoothie, but it didn't take long to realize that the presence watching him felt familiar.

"Hi Nate," he greeted, not turning around, nor conveying how truly annoyed he was. No one was supposed to find him here. No one was supposed to know where his hiding places were, regardless of how open and exposed they may have been.

No one but Sam, but Callen was fairly certain that Sam wasn't going to come looking for him any time soon.

"Hi Callen."

"How'd you find me?" he asked, knowing he needed to be more careful.

"I had Eric do a GPS trace on your cell."

Callen turned to him, he jaw slightly slack.

Nate sat down next to him and stared out at the ocean.

Callen shook his head, still surprised, not only that Nate had actually had someone run a trace on his phone, but also that Eric had gone along with it. Then he too turned to watch the waves crash on the shore.

"We're all worried about you. And Sam."

"And why is that Nate?" he asked, almost passing as genuinely oblivious.

"Don't be like that Callen," Nate said, shaking his head as he watched Callen's reactions.

"Like what Nate?" Callen asked, his voice starting to show his annoyance.

"Don't act like you have no idea what I'm talking about. You know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about you. And Sam. And whatever the hell happened between you two three weeks and two days ago."

Callen sighed and looked down at the smoothie in his hands, the sand beneath his feet, the bits of broken beer bottles scattered in the sand.

_The feeling of Sam's lips on his. His tongue running across his lips. The involuntary moan that escaped Callen's mouth as Sam bit down lightly._

_Sam's hands unbuttoning Callen's shirt, his hands running across his chest, his back, pausing briefly when his hands found a bullet hole, healed, but still there, still a reminder._

_Callen breaks away for a moment, breathing heavy, then recaptures Sam's lips with his own as he pulled Sam's shirt over his head._

_Sam's hands running across his chest, along his back._

_Sam's hands find their way down to Callen's pants and G can't help but gasp a little as he unbuttons his jeans, whilst guiding him slowly toward the bed._

_Sam's hands running across his chest, along his back._

_G lands roughly on the bed, breaking their lips apart once more. Sam succeeds in removing Callen's jeans completely before their lips find each other again._

_Sam's hands running across his chest, along his back, lighter as he passes the bullet holes. Sam's hands running along every inch of his body, exploring what is his._

_Sam's lips leaving a trail of kissing along G's neck, a tender nip here and there, marking what's his._

_Sam's hands running across his chest, along his back._

_Callen shudders with every touch, Sam's finger hot and cold and charged with an almost electric touch._

_Callen can't think, can't breath, can barely process what's happening._

_Sam's hands running across his chest, along his back, down his legs, every touch amplified tenfold._

_Sam's hands running across his chest, along his back..._

"Callen?" Nate asked, breaking Callen from his thoughts.

Callen closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"I don't wanna talk Nate," he said, standing up. "I really don't wanna talk." He threw his now empty cup in a nearby trash can before walking away altogether.


	5. Remember, Remember

_I know, I know, I haven't posted in forever. I'm sorry! Everything has been super busy at school, but the holidays are here and I will have loads of free time to work with :)_

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THE ENDLESS BEGINNING**

**CHAPTER FIVE – REMEMBER, REMEMBER**

"What did you do Nate?" Kensi hissed in his ear several days later.

Nate jumped slightly, a little shocked at being snuck up on. "What?" he asked.

"What. Did. You. Do?" she asked again, slowing so there was no doubt about what she said.

Nate gave her a semi-confused look, his eyebrows raised. "What did I do about what?"

"Urgh!" she exclaimed, batting him upside the head. "You did something. About Sam and Callen. You said something to one of them."

"I talked to Callen a few days ago..." he began.

"Well, whatever you said, has made things, if possible, worse than before."

"What do you mean?"

"Look!" she exclaimed, pointed downstairs into the bull pen. Sam was sitting at his desk, working on paperwork, while Callen was sitting in the break room, a cup of now cold tea sitting next to him as he read a magazine.

"What am I looking at? Nothing seems to have changed."

Kensi stared at him, amazed. "What kind of shrink are you?" she asked incredulously. "They can't even sit in the same room together. And, maybe you haven't noticed, but Callen made that cup of tea about an hour ago. It's cold now, and he hasn't drank a sip. And the magazine? He's been reading that for about an hour too. Only he hasn't actually been reading it. He's still on page two."

"Callen likes to stare at pictures. We all know that."

Kensi can't believe her ears. Was he really this naive? In the past, he'd shown that he too was worried about them, but now he was acting like everything was normal.

"Fine, but I'm telling you, whatever you said to Callen, made things worse."

"I know," Nate said after a long silence. "I know. He won't even talk to me anymore."

"We are falling apart Nate," she said, no longer angry at him, only worried about the team. "Sam and Callen aren't talking, and now Callen is pissed at you over whatever it was that you did."

"What do you want me to do about it?" Nate asked.

"Not necessarily you, but we are going to fix this. Something happened, and if they won't tell us, we'll have to just figure it out on our own."

"I don't like the idea of-"

"I don't really care if you don't like spying on the team. We have to do something," she said before walking back towards Eric's office.

"And by the way," she said, turning back to him. "I know you have no qualms spying on us. You might not call it spying, but the rest of us know that you're always profiling us. And that's kinda spying." She smiled curtly and continued on her way.

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_Reviews are love :)_


	6. Duality

**THE ENDLESS BEGINNING**

**CHAPTER SIX – DUALITY**

_A trail of kissed left down his neck, bite marks that left his breath caught in his throat. Hands working themselves every which way over his body, a moan escapes his lips... _

His eyes shot open.

He's disoriented for a moment, trying to remember where he was. Realization dawns and he punches the couch angrily. The sun is just rising, he's at home, and he's lying on his lumpy, uncomfortable couch.

But he can't sleep on his bed and the lumpy couch is better than the floor.

He rolls out of the couch with a sigh, massaging the kink in his neck.

Okay, so maybe the floor might have been more comfortable.

He wanders into the kitchen and starts a pot of hot water for tea with a yawn before heading to the bathroom.

//

Stakeouts weren't like the used to be. They used to be fun. G would start pointless conversations and eat noise candy that would rot his teeth. Sam would humor him in the conversations, to an extent, and make origami animals out of the candy wrappers.

Stakeouts used to be bearable, because having you're best friend sitting next to you, things rarely got boring.

Stakeouts kinda suck now. G and Sam still go on stakeouts together, because requesting to not go together would mean admitting to the others that something was wrong. So they still went on stakeouts together and still went in Sam's car because Sam hates G's car and taking two cars seems pointless.

There is an awkward silence in the car that neither of the men know what to do about. G is staring out his window, watching for Corporal MacKenzie, while Sam stares out his window. Neither says a word. G doesn't eat candy, and Sam doesn't make animals.

G has a bad feeling in his guts, but doesn't say anything, because weird gut feelings were the types of things that he and Sam used to banter about, and he knows that bringing it up won't produce to same results as it once did.

A gunshot breaks the silence not a minute later. Sam and Callen rush into the corporal's apartment building and up the stairs. The corporal is dead and his shooter is nowhere to be found. A few seconds sooner and maybe they could have caught the guy.

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G enters his house tiredly. He feels like he's been awake for days. Two days of non stop working was brutal and all he wanted to do was drink a hot cup of tea and fall asleep on a warm bed.

He walks into the kitchen on autopilot, not really thinking as he starts to make himself some tea. Eventually he finds his way onto the couch, though he doesn't remember leaving the kitchen, or even the office for that matter.

He grabs the remote off the coffee table and hits the play button, allowing the music playing softly to lull him to sleep.

_A trail of kissed left down his neck, bite marks that left his breath caught in his throat. Hands working themselves every which way over his body, a moan escapes his lips..._

He's woken by a beeping emanating from the kitchen. Food was done.

He slowly slides off the couch and heads for the kitchen. Half way there, he stops.

He wasn't making any food.

Strong hands are wrapped around him, one holding a rag over his face, the other holding him steady. The scent of Chloroform entered his nostrils as he started to feel light headed.

Nothing.

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_So this is kind of the end._

_I know, horrible, right?_

_But it isn't really the end, it's just the end of part one. You'll be able to find the next installment on my profile soon. It's called truth and consequences. Read it._

_Don't forget to review :)_


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